WASHINGTON — White House claims of bipartisanship aside, the massive plan of federal deficit spending and tax cuts President Barack Obama is expected to sign into law in Denver is stamped with a "D" — as in Democrat.
In Obama's first four weeks in office, Americans have witnessed the three-way collision of a president with bipartisan intentions, a Democratic majority in Congress flexing its legislative power and an increasingly regionalized and conservative Republican Party.
As a result, Obama's first major legislative victory in Congress is distinctly more partisan than the signature 2001 tax cuts signed into law by his predecessor, George W. Bush.
The consequences could be huge, as Obama struggles to keep a campaign promise central to his political persona and as major legislative fights are expected over housing and bank reform.
Should the $787 billion stimulus plan he signs Tuesday lead to economic recovery, Democrats would have unfettered claim to a partisan victory that could persist for generations. Should it fail, Republicans could invoke, "I told you so," and a high-water mark of the Obama presidency may have already arrived.
Compared with 2001, when Bush took office, Republicans in Congress are more concentrated in the South and Plains. As debate over the stimulus package showed, these surviving Republicans remain more intent on regaining the GOP's footing as the party of smaller government and lower taxes than giving the new president what he wanted.
Obama's first legislative victory is in stark contrast to more bipartisan initial successes of his predecessor. Bush's signature $1.35 trillion tax-cut plan passed in May of 2001 with the support of 12 Democratic senators and 20 Democrats in the House.
Many of the Democrats who supported Bush's tax cuts represented fiscally conservative Southern or Western states that have been reliably Republican in presidential elections for decades.
But Republican electoral losses in the Northeast and the Midwest this decade have stripped the GOP of moderates who might have been more willing to support Obama's stimulus or work to get the bill more palatable to centrists.
Consequently, only three Republican senators and no House Republicans voted for the "stimulus" package Obama is about to sign into law.
Bush needed the bipartisan support more than Obama does. In 2001, the Senate was tied, 50-50, as opposed to a 17-seat Democrat margin today. Republicans had a bare majority of 221 House members in 2001, as opposed to the 255 Democrats now currently in the House.
Less than a month after Bush signed his tax cut, the Senate passed his "no child left behind" education reforms by a 91-8 vote. With Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., lending critical support, only two Democratic senators opposed it, though many Democrats later would criticize the way the bill was administered and funded.
Today, while the stimulus could not have passed without the support of moderate Republican senators from Maine and Pennsylvania, no big-name Republican has reached out like Kennedy did.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., Obama's 2008 general election opponent, dined with Obama in an inauguration-eve show of bipartisanship. But McCain told CNN's John King on Sunday that the stimulus bill was a "bad beginning" because it was not the product of the bipartisanship that "President Obama promised the American people."
Still, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Obama would not abandon "unprecedented" efforts to reach out to Republicans.